Saturday, March 29, 2014

Apocalypse Now Redux

THE HORROR, THE HORROR

The events of the last twenty-four hours have shocked and
stunned me as much as they have the rest of the nation. All of a sudden, my
difficulties with my new kabuki musicalization of The Last Seduction seem
so petty and unimportant. Being the patriotic American that I am, I immediately
called Joseph my manager and Madame Rose, my publicist to see what a celebrity
of my stature could do to help those stricken by yesterday's events at the
Pentagon and World Trade Center.

The next stop on my Ssssoundssss of Ssssilence tour was
supposed to be a benefit for the Godiva Golfers of America, some sort of nudist
putters and drivers association, sponsored by Psychovant productions. Joseph
and Shannon of Psychovant are busy turning this into a disaster relief benefit,
to be held on the 16th green of the Sunshine Central Nudist Golf Course in
sunny Darrington, Washington. Rather than the usual set, we're resurrecting my
famous one woman performance art piece Lester on Lister with
its tribute to bacterial culture and asepsis. We know that people will show up
and pay large sums for this legendary production. Joseph is talking to Meryl
Streep now about doing some sort of opening act.

As I am in Seattle and my mind was full of a mind-numbing and surreal horror, I
wandered into the restored Cinerama theater for a matinee of Francis-Ford
Coppola's masterpiece Apocalypse Now Redux. Cinerama was a
precursor to Imax but few of those giant curved screens survive from the fifties.
This one was lovingly restored to its mid-50s kitschy glamor by Paul Allen and
I'm sure its where God goes to the movies when he feels like overpriced
popcorn. Lush, plush velvet seats, opulent lighting and decor and a winking
starscape ceiling are only some of the amenities for the discerning film goer.

Even at my ever youthful thirty-nine, I remember the original release of Apocalypse
Now quite well. I saw it in 70 mm and you were given a program rather
than miles of credit crawl. The original cut of the film (and the only one
available until now) was a flawed, but brilliant retelling of Joseph Conrad's Heart
of Darkness in which Vietnam of the war years stands in for the
Belgian Congo during the mad period of King Leopold. A young, virile Martin
Sheen plays Captain Willard, sent up river with a small navy crew to eliminate
the mad Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who is operating outside the restraints
of the US Military and civilization itself.

Coppola has gone back to the original footage shot for the film (many dozens of
hours worth) and completely reassembled the film for this new release making it
more than just a new cut. It's a substantial rethinking and re-editing of the
piece with a completely reconstructed soundtrack in order to take advantage of
modern sound technology. The re-edit seemlessly blends the old and the new into
a fully realized film.

Apocalypse Now Redux contains the same tragic flaw as the original
cut. When Willard and his crew reach Kurtz and his compound, it's simply not
possible to capture this 'Heart of Darkness' on film. No matter how many
gruesome bodies are draped artistically around the set, showing the horror
reduces it. We can only be truly terrified of what we do not know and the
minute we see enough to process and make sense of it, the horror is diminished.
Much has been made of Brando's Kurtz over the years. There have been those that
have called the performance brilliant, those that have felt his corpulent
ramblings destroyed the mood and narrative drive, and those who found his
sequences profoundly silly. This new cut has helped put his performance into
more proper perspective. The extension of the journey to the compound and the
new rhythms of the film actually help support Brando's appearance and the film
no longer collapses at the end in the way it used to do. At the same time,
Coppola is unable to bring the film to an appropriate catharsis. It simply may
not be humanly possible for any filmmaker to capture the required moments of
death and horror and complete breakdown of humanity and civilization,
especially when we have become so used to seeing such things for real on the
nightly news.

All of the moments for which the film is famous remain, some slightly reordered
to make more narrative sense. The supporting cast (Frederic Forrest, Laurence
Fishburne, Sam Bottoms, Albert Hall) on the boat get more of a chance to
develop their characters and additional moments to shine. Best of all, we get
more of Robert Duvall's Colonel Kilgore and an expansion of the taking of the
delta town so his boys can surf. There are two major sequences restored to the
journey. The first, an encounter with the Playboy bunnies from the USO show
stuck in a muddy hell of a semi-abandoned medi-vac camp. This sequence helps
with narrative cohesion, gives the boat crew some great moments and turns the
young women from objects into people. The second is an encounter with a French
plantation family trying to preserve a dying way of life. The sequence is long
and well performed (and gives Martin Sheen a short romance with Aurore Clement)
but comes at an awkward moment in the storytelling. It would have worked better
earlier in the film.

The impact of this film with its surreal sights and sounds of war on the large
screen cannot be ignored. Made in the late 70s, long before ILM and computers
came to dominate special effects, the incredible visuals are all shot in
camera. Those aren't CGI explosions, they're real and you can tell the
difference. By all means, go see this on the big screen if you have the chance.
Broken mirror. Youthful Harrison Ford. Flying bovine. Helicopter strafing.
Stolen surf board. Eye shadow camouflage. Opium pipe foreplay. Bird trainer
sex. Stoned Dennis Hopper. Bamboo cages.